Whispering Windrush
On discovering lush river and meadow landscapes around ‘Wychford’, the aspiring poet Guy in novelist Compton Mackenzie’s Guy and Pauline (1915) declared: “By gad, if I can’t write here, I ought to be shot.” More familiar to us today for works such as Whisky Galore, Mackenzie had a soft spot for the picturesque Cotswold town of Burford (recreated as fictional Wychford), living for a while beside the River Windrush, upon which it stands.
Indeed, the Windrush is prone to inspire flights of imagination in most people who view it, and the less-explored, golden-stone villages along its length to the north and south certainly whisper tales ripe for the telling
